If you have listened to the Today in iOS podcast long enough you know that I have a love / hate relationship with stats. As in I love them when they prove my point and hate then when they don't.

Well Google just gave some stats I kind of think I love. Way back in August Google said Android phones were being activated at a clip of 200,000 per day. And that was the last time they talked about those numbers - that is until Monday December 6th when Google said they are now up to 214,000 activations per day.

During that time Apple went from 230,000 activations of iOS devices per day on September 1st to 270,000 average activations per day in Mid October. Which is a nice growth vs Android phones which actually have seen lower per day activation numbers since August. But Rob Going from 200,000 to 214,000 is an increase you say. Ah but least we forget that the Samsung Galaxy tab which is in that 214,000 per day number and they represent approx. 17,000 activations per day. So for Android phones since August there is actually about a 3,000 per day decrease. See why I can love stats.

And if you take these number further. On an average day there are 56,000 more iOS devices activated then there are Android devices. But since everyone likes to talk about quarterly numbers - this quarter based on those number Apple will increase its lead of iOS over Android OS by over 5 Million units. That is a lot more potential iOS customers for App developers vs Android.

It looks like third time is a charm - As in third golden master. Or I guess first - really as both iOS 4.2 GM's were bypassed for iOS 4.2.1 - so for the public there is no iOS 4.2. Just a jump to iOS 4.2.1. We have mentioned some of the new features in the past - but a quick summary of the new features are:

1. AirPrint - Which allows direct Printing to an ePrint Printer, or to any printer connected to your Mac - while you Mac is turned on.Update - Per printing to any Printer connected to a mac that was true in the beta version of Mac OS 10.6.5 - but was removed for the GM version.

4. Find my iOS device - for free. You can easily set up your iOS device for the find my device feature and if your device gets lost - you can locate it on a map, send a message to it, lock it down or even remote wipe it - all for free - no more need for a paid mobileme account.

NOTE: If your iPhone is Unlocked and/or your iOS device is Jailbroken - you should not update to iOS 4.2.1 at this time. Please wait for more info on this to come shortly (hopefully).

If you are on an iPad - you get all the features from iOS 4.0 and 4.1 as well. So for iPad owners it is a major plus plus update. For iPad owners you also get - folders, multitasking, GameCenter, Unified Mailbox, iAds, and a bunch of smaller features.

If you have an iPhone 3G - iOS 4.2.1 brings one key new feature - Usability - as in you can use your iPhone 3G again. If you updated your iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 or iOS 4.1 - you may have noticed a little bug where in your iPhone 3G slowed to 1/4 impulse power. Well now it looks like your iPhone 3G is back up to full impulse power. Granted not at warp speed like the iPhone 4 - but back to what you were used to in iOS 3.x

"The Find My iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) feature is now free to use without a MobileMe℠ subscription and helps you locate your missing device.* The Find My iPhone app is a free download on the App Store℠ and lets users easily locate a missing device on a map and have it display a message or play a sound. Users can even remotely lock or wipe data from a lost device to protect privacy."

I set this up for my iPhone 4 and it was quick to set up and easy to use and I did not have to pay for mobile me for this. So I do find it interesting that Apple made one of the most compelling reasons for getting mobileme - a free option. I wonder if this means in the near future all of mobileme features will be free to iOS owners. I hope so.

According to Apple you can use Find My iPhone for free with your iPhone 4, iPad, or 4th generation iPod touch that has iOS 4.2 installed. Or you can use Find My iPhone with a paid MobileMe subscription. Again not sure on that paid subscription thing now. But lets say you have in addition to an iOS device from 2010 (iPhone 4, iPad or iPod touch 4th gen) that have a pre 2010 iOS device. Like the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 3G and you want to set up find my iPhone on them - are you SOL - NO no you are not. You just need to set up your 2010 iOS device first.

Life hacker has an article that goes over this. I have not had a chance to try this out on my 3GS yet - as I have not updated it to iOS 4.2.1 - as it is jailbroken and I was going to wait. But if anyone else does this with success - as the authors of the lifehacker article claim to - please let me know. But it does look like it is easy to do assuming you also happen to have a 2010 iOS device.

One other feature I did not mention that is added to iOS 4.2.1 is the ability to set specific SMS alert tones for your contacts. You are still limited to using the stock SMS tones - but that list of stock SMS tones has grown - but sadly most are still long tones - which is not the best for Text messages. Who wants a 10 sec tone when you are getting a test message every 5 secs. Just sayin. So this is not custom SMS tones - it is specific SMS tones from a predetermined list of tones that you can assign to your contacts - which is still much better than how it was before - if you are someone that is looking to set up specific tones to different people.

Feedback from many different listeners has been very positive for this update. The one issue that has been reported more than once was after the initial update - the Apps and podcasts did not get sync'd over and it required another sync to get that content brought over. So as long as you are NOT jailbreaking and / or unlocking - it does look safe to update. But you should still backup before you do the update - as always.

Below is a video of my 2 year old son dressed up in his Retro Robot Custom which has 2 iPhones - one to scroll "Boo" and the other to scroll the Binary version of "Boo". And no he is likely not going to date until after high school.